The Automation Advantage: Do You Know Who’s Visiting Your Website?

Back on Valentine’s Day, Major League Baseball pitchers and catchers reported for spring training, which got me thinking. I’m a huge baseball fan, and always make time to go to at least a few Brewers games each season, while I listen to and watch hundreds more. I’m excited about the possibility for Andrew Susac, who came over to Milwaukee from the San Francisco Giants last year, to win the starting catcher’s role.

Imagine what it’s like to be given your shot to make a major-league roster. Everything you do is being watched closely by your fellow players, coaches, and management. The choices you make daily are a risk, and knowing what to do in each situation is critical – what pitch to recommend, whether to try to throw out a base stealer, picking up on opposing hitters’ tendencies. It takes a lot of preparation and work.

Just like professional baseball players, modern sales teams are under huge pressure to perform. Producing on deadline, hunting for new leads, presenting, making cold calls and sending emails. Figuring out the best use of their time on any given day can be a real challenge. Without the right intelligence, this can boil down to guesswork. They need more and better information on leads and prospects, and they expect Marketing to supply it. But what’s the best way to gather this kind of detail in a timely fashion, and make it accurate enough to be actionable? The tools you use today won’t cut it.

Sales teams want to know:

Which of my prospects are more interested?

Who should I follow up with this week?

What new possible leads are out there?

Buyers Are Out There

We all know the sales cycle has changed. Your prospects are out there doing research on your company and your competitors way in advance. We’ve been told that up to 67 percent of the buying process is done digitally, and buyers won’t contact sales until they’re ready. But up to 98 percent of web visitors aren’t filling out forms on your site, so how can Sales learn about these potential prospects? What if you could give your teams the right information at the right time to help them be proactive, not reactive? Enter Visitor ID.

Beyond Basic Analytics

Standard website analytics tools like Google Analytics don’t supply the same depth of detail as a Visitor ID solution. In fact, beyond basic geographic information, Google Analytics can only tell you how many visits are coming from certain regions and what pages they visit. For actionable intelligence, you need more.

Visitor ID tracking can identify website visits from prospect companies before they contact you, letting Sales know who’s coming to research your products and services, when they visit and how often. These tools are powerful enough to track down prospect company information even when visitors come in from different physical office locations.

Knowledge Is Power

Imagine being able to arm Sales with the knowledge that a prospect they called on last week is actively looking at your site, what pages and information they looked at, and how many times. This kind of intelligence can help your teams find the right times to follow up, and the right information to follow up with.

Visitor ID intelligence is not just for known prospects, either. If visitors from previously unknown companies browse your website, you’ll get in-depth data on their company size, number of employees, annual revenue estimates and more. Reports on recent visitors can help tell your sales teams about new possible leads they may never have thought of.

Adding Visitor ID to your website is a great way to dip your toes into Marketing Automation, and gets even more powerful when combined with a robust Content Marketing program. At Element, we can help you grow your business with all of the above and more.

Want to get started with a Visitor ID solution and equip your sales team with improved intelligence? Let’s talk.

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Marcus Sanford has worked in marketing and communications for 17+ years, driving success for hundreds of clients in the financial services, small business, healthcare, manufacturing and non-profit/advocacy spaces.